Jeffery Deaver - The burning wire

"Christ," the big detective muttered.

Rhyme shook aside the image and asked, "Who was he?"

"Name was Luis Martin. Assistant manager in a music store. Twenty-eight. No record."

"No connection to Algonquin, MTA… any reason anybody'd want him dead?"

"None," Sachs said.

"Wrong time, wrong place," Sellitto summarized.

Rhyme said, "Ron. The coffee shop? What'd you find?"

"A man in dark blue overalls came into the place about ten forty-five. He had a laptop with him. He went online."

"Blue overalls?" Sellitto asked. "Any logo? ID?"

"Nobody saw. But the Algonquin workers there, their uniforms were the same dark blue."

"Get a description?" the rumpled cop persisted.

"Probably white, probably forties, glasses, dark cap. Couple people said no glasses and no cap. Blond hair, red hair, dark hair."

"Witnesses," Rhyme muttered disparagingly. You could have a shooter naked to the waist kill somebody in front of ten witnesses and each one would describe him as wearing ten different colored T-shirts. In the past few years his doubt about the value of eyewitnesses had tempered somewhat-because of Sachs's skill in interviewing and because of Kathryn Dance, who'd proved that analyzing body language was scientific enough in most cases to produce repeatable results. Still, he could never completely shake his skepticism.

"And what happened to this guy in the overalls?" Rhyme asked.

"Nobody's really sure. It was pretty chaotic. All they knew was that they heard this huge bang, the whole street went white with the flash and then everybody ran outside. Nobody could remember seeing him after that."

"He took his coffee with him?" Rhyme asked. He loved beverage containers. They were like ID cards, with the DNA and fingerprint information they contained, along with trace that adhered because of the sticky nature of milk, sugar and other additives.

"Afraid he did," Pulaski confirmed.

"Shit. What'd you find at the table?"

"This." Pulaski pulled a plastic envelope out of a milk crate.

"It's empty." Sellitto squinted and teased his imposing belly, maybe scratching an itch, maybe absently dismayed that his latest fad diet wasn't working.

But Rhyme looked at the plastic bag and smiled. "Good job, Rookie."

"Good job?" the lieutenant muttered. "There's nothing there."

"My favorite sort of evidence, Lon. The bits that're invisible. We'll get to that in a minute. I'm wondering about hackers," Rhyme mused. "Pulaski, what about wireless at the coffee shop? I was thinking about it and I'm betting they didn't have it."

"You're right. How'd you know?"

"He couldn't take the chance that it'd be down. He's probably logging in through some cell phone connection. But we need to find out how he got into the Algonquin system. Lon, get Computer Crimes on board. They need to contact somebody in Internet security at Algonquin. See if Rodney's available."

The NYPD Computer Crimes Unit was an elite group of about thirty detectives and support staff. Rhyme worked with one of them occasionally, Detective Rodney Szarnek. Rhyme thought of him as a young man, but in fact he had no idea of his age since he had the boyish attitude, sloppy dress and tousled hair of a hacker-an image and avocation that tend to take years off people.

Sellitto placed the call and after a brief conversation hung up, reporting that Szarnek would call Algonquin's IT team immediately to see about hacking into the grid servers.

Cooper was looking reverently at the wire. "So that's it?" Then lifting another of the bags that contained misshapen metal disks, the shrapnel, he added, "Lucky nobody was walking by. If this'd happened on Fifth Avenue, there could be two dozen people dead."

Ignoring the tech's unnecessary observation, Rhyme focused on Sachs. He saw that her eyes had gone still as she looked at the tiny disks.

In a voice perhaps harsher than necessary, to shake her attention away from the shrapnel, he called, "Come on, people. Let's get to work."

EASING INTO THE booth, Fred Dellray found himself looking at a pale skinny man who could have been a wasted thirty or a preserved fifty.

The guy was wearing a sports jacket that was too big, its source either a very low-end thrift shop or a coat rack, when nobody was looking.

"Jeep."

"Uhm, that's not my name anymore."

"Not your name? Like nacho cheese. Then whose cheese is it?"

"I don't get-"

"Whatcha name now?" Dellray asked, frowning deeply, playing a particular role, one he generally slipped into with people like this. Jeep, or Not Jeep, had been a sadistic junkie the FBI agent had collared in an undercover set that required Dellray to laugh his way through the man's graphic depiction of torturing a college kid who'd reneged on a drug payment. Then came the bust and, after some negotiation and time served, the man became one of Dellray's pets.

Which meant a tight leash that had to be jerked occasionally.

"It was Jeep. But I decided to change it. I'm Jim now, Fred."

Changes. The magic word of the day.

"Oh, oh, speakin' of names: 'Fred… Fred'? I'm your buddy, I'm your best friend? I didn't remember those introductions, signing your dance card, meetin' the parents."

"Sorry, sir."

"Tell ya what: Stick with 'Fred.' Don't believe you when you say 'sir.' "

The man was a disgusting morsel of humanity, but Dellray had learned you had to walk a fine line. Never contempt, yet never hesitate to dig in a knuckle or two, the pressure of fear.

Fear breeds respect. Just the way of the world.

"Now here's what we're doing. This's important. You got a date coming up, I'm recalling."

A hearing, about leaving the jurisdiction. Dellray didn't care about losing him. Jeep's usefulness was pretty much gone. That was the nature of CIs; they have a shelf life of fresh yogurt. Jeep-Jim was going to appeal to the New York State parole board about permission to move to Georgia. Of all places.

"If you'd put in a word, Fred, sir, that'd be great." And he turned big soupy eyes the agent's way.

Wall Street should take a lesson from the confidential informant world. No derivatives, no default swaps, no insurance, no cooking the books. It was simple. You gave your snitch something of X value, and he gave you something equally important.

If he didn't produce, he was out. If you didn't pay, you got shit.

And all so very transparent.

"Okay," Dellray said. "Whatchu want's on the table. Now 'bout what I want. And what I have to say up front is it's time sensitive. You know what that means, Jim?"

"Somebody's gonna get fucked and pretty soon."

"Rightie-ro. Now, listen close. I need to find Brent."

A pause. "William Brent? Why would I know where to find him?" Jeep-Jim, Slim-Jim, asked this with too much rise in his voice, telling Dellray that the snitch had at least some idea where to find the man.

Dellray sang, "Georgia's on my mind."

A full sixty seconds passed while Jeep did some negotiating with himself.

"I mean, maybe I could… the thing is, there's a possibility…"

"You gonna finish those sentences or can I eat 'em?"

"Lemme check something."

Jeep-James-Jim rose and walked into the corner of the place and began texting, leaving Dellray amused at the paranoia about overhearing a text message. Jeepy boy would probably do well in Georgia.

Dellray sipped water the waiter had brought. He hoped the skinny guy's mission would be successful… One of the agent's biggest successes was running William Brent, a middle-aged white guy, unathletic and looking like a Wal-Mart checker. He'd been key in bringing down a very nasty conspiracy. A domestic terrorist group-racists and separatists-had a plan to blow up a number of synagogues on a Friday evening and blame Islamic fundamentalists for it. They had money but not the means, so they turned to a local organized crime family, who also had no love of either Jews or Muslims. Brent had been hired by the family to help and he'd fallen for Dellray's twitchy character-an arms dealer from Haiti selling rocket-propelled grenades.